Comments on: Family History and Guilt

By: Roger

Roger — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:22:44 +0000

While raising children, my wife and I never thought of family history. (also because we had little old white haired aunts doing the work relentlessly). Now that our aunts have passed on and we are empty nesters, the urge has hit us and won’t leave us alone. We have been attending genealogy classes at the family history center, indexing on our home computer and have been successful in finding my wife’s great, great grandmother (she was married five times which made it difficult to track her down by her last name). Also I found a tree that was named for two of my great uncles in Alabama because they were hung on it for stealing horses! Colorful history.

By: Eve

Eve — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 04:33:51 +0000

Not coming from LDS ancestors, I have also uncovered sad family stories and proof that my ancestors didn’t always lead stellar lives.

Not to worry, Millie–such less-than-stellar lives are hardly confined to the non-LDS. I grew up hearing occasional stories of affairs had and domestic violence committed by my Mormon ancestors. Even some of the sacred pioneers weren’t all that stellar. Thank goodness.

By: Millie

Millie — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:56:21 +0000

Not coming from LDS ancestors, I have also uncovered sad family stories and proof that my ancestors didn’t always lead stellar lives.

I don’t think that’s the point, though. The point is to learn to love your family, whomever they are, whatever they were while they lived. Forgiveness needs to be a big part of family history, and charity as well. I have some of these same situations in my ancestry, but I am comforted believing that perhaps if the gospel had found them, they would have made different choices.

In the process of researching our family members, it’s really easy to sit back and armchair-live their lives for them. If only he wasn’t a wife-beating drunk. If only her parents hadn’t lied about her age so she could marry the wife-beating drunk. But they were real people making real mistakes, just like we are, and even if the truth isn’t always pretty, it’s still our family.

Even if we don’t remember them, they remember and know and love us. They paved the way and – my best example – lived through childbirth without anesthesia and OUTHOUSES for us. If nothing else, I hope we feel some kind of indebtedness (not to say guilt) for that much.

By: Kiskilili

Kiskilili — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:24:18 +0000

Ah, but you joined in the demonic machinations of my twisted mind!

The best link, of course, is the telephone link. They affected people who affected people who affected people who affected us. They were important to people who were important to people who were important to people who are important to us.

Fair enough–this does make some sense to me, confused though I be.

By: Kaimi

Kaimi — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:28:52 +0000

Ooh. Leave it to Kiskilili to point out that we don’t know which of those bastards we’re really related to anyway.

It’s a good point. According to Jared Diamond, the number is (as I recall) about 15%. So yeah, it’s safe to say that a great-great-grandma somewhere is statistically likely to have been getting some non-marital action.

And you’re right, K. That does, to some degree, highlight some of the bigger questions. What exactly links us to past generations? Why should I care who g-g-g-grandma was? Maybe she was really cool. But then, there are really cool people I can meet, today. Should I see her as particularly different than anybody else?

The best link, of course, is the telephone link. They affected people who affected people who affected people who affected us. They were important to people who were important to people who were important to people who are important to us.

Beyond that, though, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly why I should worry about one eighteenth-century German farmer, and not another.

By: Kiskilili

Kiskilili — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:39:35 +0000

Perhaps this is too ridiculous for most of you to think about, but I can’t help but contemplate the significance of what geneticists delicately call “non-paternity events” to our genealogical research. It’s a safe bet that some of those ancestors some of us are researching are not our biological ancestors. Does this make a difference to how we think about genealogical research? I suppose not, although it highlights for me how difficult it is to understand what specifically is important to linking the generations.

By: abby76

abby76 — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:23:39 +0000

Great post! I’m not good at family history. I do like to learn about those who have gone before. I don’t think I have ever made their past so present as you have by visualing so much about the quasi-relative in the Civil War.

By: Mark IV

Mark IV — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:41:49 +0000

It’s interesting that the conversation has taken a turn. Elbereth began talking about the guilt that people fell for not doing family history, and now some of us have described the discomfort we feel when we discover some of our family history.

It’s an interesting question. How much of the family laundry do we air in public, and how much do we keep decently private? The answer to that question probably changes over time, and after a century or two, today’s reprobate might be viewed as a charming rogue. Let’s begin by acknowledging that every family has its black sheep, and that nobody needs to feel ashamed of her ancestry. One of my families had eight children, and every one of them took up residence for an extended time at either the penitentiary or the mental hospital. Another ancestor died from a gunshot wound. He was shot while sneaking out the back door of a house where he had been, uh, keeping company with a woman whose husband came home from work earlier than expected.

We would like to think that our forebears are heroic, but for the most part, they are just plain old people, and we don’t need to look very far for evidence of our fallen nature.

By: summershine

summershine — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 03:36:13 +0000

Starfoxy and Eve,
I personally have some very recent, dark family history. When I started digging into my dad’s side I had a feeling I might be in for some unpleasant discoveries. My dad’s father left with the family maid when my dad was 3, so he never knew his dad. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about his dad either. The man who could have been a grandpa to me but chose not to be.
Finding information about his family was difficult, and finding out what they were like was even more so.
It was very discouraging to find that my great grandfather, according to family stories was a drunk and abusive. He had six children with his first wife. When she died he sent his young children off to be raised by various family members. Then he remarried and had more children. But he never took responsibility for his first set of children again.
It was discouraging to weave through this family and find rampant divorce, drinking and general discord.
To my great surprise I found record of my other paternal great grandfather, having been married twice. First when he was 21. I contacted living descendants of his first wife, to hear that he had fathered a child with her, and then simply abandoned them 18 months later. Ten or so years down the road, his second wife (my great grandmother) up and left him while he was having a lung removed for an experimental tuberculosis surgery!
I have come to find that his second wife was a woman of…well, deceit is a somewhat harsh word. But evidently if the truth was ugly she never shared it. She also suffered from mental illness, as do many in my family. Her daughter, my grandma told me she remembered being about 6 years old and watching her mother attack her father with a hot poker from the fire.
I have found many ugly things, and have been so discouraged at times to know I hail from people with such behavior. But in the same lines there are those who are honorable and good.

The stories we tend to tell about it don’t give us much guidance about what to do when we encounter the inevitable ugly family secrets or nasty, even criminal, misbehavior.

It’s the same thing we do for all those whose lives we may not know about. We do the work. We put judgement aside and exercise hope that they have repented and accepted the gospel.
And we don’t try to hide the stories that are ugly and nasty, so that they are not forgotten or repeated.

By: Eve

Eve — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:34:55 +0000

Starfoxy, that’s a fascinating question I’ve long had about family history. The stories we tend to tell about it don’t give us much guidance about what to do when we encounter the inevitable ugly family secrets or nasty, even criminal, misbehavior. And sometimes it’s evident that violence has been passed down from generation to generation.

I imagine all families have dark histories somewhere. It’s probably easier to manage when it’s at some distance (when someone who lived in 1638 was clearly an abusive alcoholic philanderer), but the closer it is to the living, the more difficult it is to know how to address, I think. I’d be curious what Elbereth has to say on the subject, if she and other professionals are given any guidance in such matters.